I’m not really sure I get this. You’re not getting a shot to somehow spite people who bitch about having the flu when they really just have a cold?
The problem one has with influenza is that it typically takes a couple of days to incubate during which time you’ll mostly feel fine. It then usually hits suddenly and like a ton of bricks. Unfortunately people are infective while still asymptomatic.
When I left my house for work one sunny afternoon, I had zero symptoms. I stopped to pick up some food for me and my co-worker and while waiting for it to cook after ordering, started to feel very slightly queasy. Got to work ~30 minutes later and had lost all appetite - literally couldn’t bring myself to eat a bite. ~45-60 minutes after that I had to lay down feeling seriously unwell. ~30 minutes after that I was feverish and experiencing severe alternating sweats/chills - I was barely able to drive myself home, where I proceeded to be a hermitic wreck for the next several days. If I had waited another hour to try and drive back, I probably couldn’t have done it. Had to get a friend to leave me broth and meds on my front step, as I was literally incapable of getting out to fend for myself for a few days.
It’s great that you work from home, but unless you are a complete shut-in you’re just as likely to get infected from some poor asymptomatic bastard standing in line next to you at the market.
While I come up positive to eggs on a RAST test, meaning my immune system has IgE antibodies to egg proteins, I’ve never had a problem eating eggs.
The problem isn’t an egg allergy - the problem is that I had a severe reaction to a flu shot. It’s not theoretically a problem, it HAS been a problem.
Either my body can discern the difference between eating eggs and being injected with them, or it was something other than egg proteins that I’ve reacted to. Which is a possibility that folks seem reluctant to consider but might be an important one, as the formulations of such shots have changed over time.
I have tried to get one of “safe” flu shots but I have been unable to do so, and the insurance I had up until a year ago wouldn’t cover them even if the doc could have gotten one. Either they plain just don’t cover them, or they want extensive documentation there’s a problem - but this happened forty years ago, the clinic where it happened no longer exists, and neither do the medical records. Paying out of pocket for extensive testing would have been prohibitive. Paying for the “safe” shot out of pocket would also have been prohibitive if, again, I could have obtained one.
Since I’ve had a reaction to the actual shot no one who gives the shot has shown any inclination to try another and see if the first reaction was just a fluke. One of the pharmacists where I work more or less said that while he has no trouble using an epi-pen in an emergency he’d rather avoid creating such emergencies in the first place.
Maybe if I could afford to see an allergist it could be determined for certain whether or not I’m allergic to the current shot and if one of the alternatives out there would be OK for me, but even now I just don’t have the money for that - coverage for allergies under my insurance sort of sucks when it comes to seeing specialists.
I’m sure the literally thousands of people I come into face-to-face contact with at work have absolutely no idea that I’m an at-risk person. I look like a healthy woman somewhere between 45 and 55.
You can’t tell by looking at someone. You probably DO come into contact with people who are high risk of problems from the flu because we’re probably at least as common as people who are, say, left-handed. It’s not just feeble old people in nursing homes, plenty of folks out in the community working for a living can’t get a flu shot for whatever reason, or are still at high risk even if they do (folks who have had organ transplants, for example, remain at risk because their immune systems are compromised).
My husband and I just got back from a 10-day cruise. We got our flu shots about a month before we left. I’ve started getting them annually anyway, but before being in a confined space with lots of strangers from all over the world, you bet I’m going to protect myself.
Not to mention the new grandbaby in the house. I’ve never had the flu, and I hope I never do.
I’m like the OP but a little younger, 57, and I too don’t get sick. I used to never get the flu shot — I would say that being exposed to sick people was “good for my immune system, it makes it stronger”. But then I read The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, and that pandemic killed the people with strong immune systems! It explained how that pandemic got a strong person’s own immune system excited and over-activated, to kill its own host.
I have heard all the arguments why I should, and they seem reasonable on teh surface, especially as I am a huge advocate of all other vaccinations, immunisations, and herd immunity to protect children.
But:
[LIST=a]
[li]I don’t trust the statistics of deaths from influenza each year. They are not telling the whole story, in that they are actually dying of other illnesses, of which the flu is only a single contributing factor. Exaggerated statistics to that degree automatically make me distrust them.[/li][/quote]
It’s impossible to know precisely how many flu deaths there are each year, but the estimates are not created to benefit The Flu Shot Industry.
“CDC does not know exactly how many people die from seasonal flu each year. There are several reasons for this. First, states are not required to report individual seasonal flu cases or deaths of people older than 18 years of age to CDC. Second, seasonal influenza is infrequently listed on death certificates of people who die from flu-related complications. Third, many seasonal flu-related deaths occur one or two weeks after a person’s initial infection, either because the person may develop a secondary bacterial co-infection (such as bacterial pneumonia) or because seasonal influenza can aggravate an existing chronic illness (such as congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Also, most people who die from seasonal flu-related complications are not tested for flu, or they seek medical care later in their illness when seasonal influenza can no longer be detected from respiratory samples. Sensitive influenza tests are only likely to detect influenza if performed within a week after onset of illness. In addition, some commonly used tests to diagnose influenza in clinical settings are not highly sensitive and can provide false negative results (i.e. they misdiagnose flu illness as not being flu.) For these reasons, many flu-related deaths may not be recorded on death certificates. These are some of the reasons that CDC and other public health agencies in the United States and other countries use statistical models to estimate the annual number of seasonal flu-related deaths.”
I marvel at the folks who are “not susceptible” or think they can tell when they’re becoming immunocompromised (like kambuckta). Too bad it doesn’t work that way.
I work from home, too. That said, I don’t see it as protecting myself; rather, I don’t get out in crowds a lot, so if anything, I feel like my immune system isn’t as good as when I was around people all the time. At least, I seem to get sick every single time I DO end up around big crowds - I can pretty much count on being sick the week after I travel for work, for example.
I always get a flu shot. I just don’t see the downside; getting sick sucks. Getting a flu shot takes about 10 minutes. Even if it’s not always super effective, the chances it’ll keep me from the misery of even relatively benign flu is worth it to me.
My wife and I are 71, and I’m Type 2 diabetic. We get the high dose flu shot every year, and exercise other precautions such as carrying hand sanitizer in a coat pocket during flu season, avoiding touching common public surfaces and the like. Volunteer work puts you in contact with a lot of people, all of whom are possible sources of infection.
I didn’t for some years because I had a bad reaction to thimerisol, the preservative that was used in the vaccine. Since they’ve stopped using that at least for individual doses, the kind you get at places like CVS or Safeway, I’ve been going to them to get my shot; I did it about a month ago this year. No charge.
I’ve gotten it for as long as I can remember. At first, I used to pay for it, but now the province sets up free vaccination clinics and it is free. Or you can go to a pharmacy and they charge $5. Obviously subsidized.
One year I did get the flu anyway. Had one hell of a miserable day (spent traveling on a train to NY, even worse), but then it was over. I told my doctor about it and he said he’d had the same thing–a one day flu. He felt certain that our cases were made much milder by our having received the shots.
One year my wife had a bad reaction to the shot (nothing like what Broomstick described, though) and the following year our doctor divided the shot into two doses a week apart. She had no reaction to that and has no reaction to the usual shot since then.
The fact that one has never had the flu is not a good reason to avoid it. As my snow clearance guy said to me one, “People are dying today who never died before.”
I work in an elementary school. Getting a flu shot is basic self-preservation. If I still get the flu, oh well, at least I did everything I could. But if I got the flu and didn’t have a shot, I’d feel like a moron. And my insurance covers it 100%, so there’s no excuse.
This year I had to wait later than I normally do because I got a bad sinus infection. The MinuteClinic gave me antibiotics and told me I should wait a couple of weeks for my flu shot. So I did, because when the place that aggressively markets flu shots tells you you can’t have one, you listen.
I never used to get the flu vaccine. Was healthy all my adult life, so never really got a taste of how bad it could get. That is, until about 5 years ago (in my mid-40s), when my wife and I both got terribly sick. Off of work for a couple of weeks, fever over 104 at times, and frequently waking up during the night with a general feeling like I was actually going to die. At one point I was coughing so violently that I vomited - and I vomited so violently that I tore my esophagus. I was never formally diagnosed with the flu, but it definitely was not a garden-variety cold; I’d be very surprised if I ever found out it wasn’t the flu.
I don’t ever want to get that sick again. These days my wife and I both get vaccinated every fall.
The quote below was written by Dr. Rachel Heap, an Australian ICU doctor. She wrote it after hearing too many parents talking about the right to choose not to vaccinate their kids and after seeing the deaths of many kids and adults from complications from vaccine-preventable diseases. I saw it on Facebook; someone saw it in their doctor’s office and posted it.
***“Not vaccinating your kids leaves them vulnerable to disease their whole lives.
When your daughter gets rubella when pregnant, how are you going to explain that you chose to leave her at risk?
What will you say when she calls you and tells you she has cervical cancer, because you decided that she wouldn’t need the HPV vaccine?
What do you tell your son when he breaks the news to you that he cannot have kids, thanks to the mumps that he got as a teenager?
And what do you say when he gives influenza to his grandma? How do you explain that she won’t be coming home from hospital? Not ever?
Do you tell them that you didn’t think these diseases were that serious? That you thought your organic, home-cooked food was enough to protect them?
Do you say sorry?***”
Dr. Heap has been asked for permission to post this numerous times and has no problems with its being quoted and distributed.
I have generally avoided them when it wasn’t mandatory. In the National Guard pre 9-11 we frequently weren’t provided enough for everyone so I could still opt out most years.
My reason is how I react. Back in high school, I saw an allergist after struggling with being sick often during my youth. While she found some mild exposure allergies other tests also showed what she summarized as my immune system overreacting a bit. I just felt worse when I picked up relatively minor bugs.
Immunizations generally make me feel sick. I’ve been absolutely miserable in response and I’ve gotten a lot of vaccinations as an adult including things like smallpox this millenium. Mostly I deal with it for the benefit. Tetanus vaccine practically guarantees I’ll be miserable but it was never optional. It also made cost-benefit sense to me. The protection was worth the occasional booster.
Flu shots haven’t made sense for me when they were optional. I’ve missed school or work as a result of flu shots. 2-3 days of misery and low grade fever is my normal response, even when I don’t stay home sick. The vaccine also hit and miss at providing protection against the strains I might be exposed to. While I might be at more risk for the strains that severely affect the healthy, my risk from other strains is lower than average since I am generally fit and healthy. There’s just not enough of an upside to choose to be injected with that needle full of suffering.
I suspect more people would decline if they had my reaction to the shot.
I got serious about flu shots in the early 1990’s. My employer began to offer them at the nurse’s office. Insurance paid the full cost.
Haven’t missed a year since.
A few times my arm was sore for a few hours.
I remember one time that I felt sick with a low grade fever. I left work and came home. Took some aspirin and napped that afternoon. I was ok the next morning.
Otherwise the flu shot hasn’t bothered me.
I’ve caught a few colds. So far the shots have protected me from flu.
In the 1918 pandemic, one big problem was that the flu spread through US Army bases, very full due to the war, and killed the fit soldiers at a higher rate than the general population.
BTW the reason it was called the Spanish flu was not because it started in Spain. The flu was considered a military secret during the war so it was reported first by Spain, which was neutral.